Living and Learning (also known as Guys Do Not Belong In Grocery Stores, and Little Mice That Roar.)

You ever notice how some weeks seem to produce more learning experiences than others?

ACT ONE, SCENE ONE

Earlier this week, Dangerous Shopper Dale wanders into a local grocery store and thinks, 'Hmmmm, maybe I should get some of that fancy, snooty, gourmet coffee and see what the big deal is all about.' So Dangerous Shopper Dale disses his lifelong morning buddy, the Folgers can, and picks up a fancy, snooty, gourmet looking bag of fancy, snooty, gourmet coffee.

The next morning Half Awake, Stumble to the CoffeePot, Dangerous Shopper Dale with one eye still shut, struggles to finally pull open his brand new bag of fancy, snooty, gourmet coffee to discover that Shopper Dale picked up a bag of WHOLE BEANS!!! Of course you will know that since Dangerous Shopper Dale has spent the better part of 35 years with a Folgers can, that DSD does not own a COFFEE GRINDER!!

Now then, anyone with a decent caffeine addiction will appreciate this, but you have to put the image in your mind of half awake Dangerous Shopper Dale, in the shock of discovering he has no coffee, other than a bag of WHOLE BEANS, valiantly dumps a handful of WHOLE BEANS into a ZipLock Sandwich Bag and earnestly ( spell that , IN PANIC ) begins pummeling this little ziplock bag of WHOLE BEANS with a pepper shaker in hopes of "grinding" enough to make that first cup!!!

Lesson for Dangerous Shopper Dale.....LABELS ARE FOR READING!!!! :)

By the way, Dangerous Shopper Dale in the process of becoming Upscale, Snooty, Fancy Coffee Drinker Dale has FIRED his FOLGERS can AND is actually contemplating the notion of SHOPPING for a COFFEE GRINDER!!!

I N T E R M I S S I O N

ACT TWO, SCENE ONE
Later in this story I will explain the Roaring Mice thought.

Yesterday, my bike pal Lisa and I did our pretty much usual Saturday morning bike ride but with a slight twist. Friday afternoon, Lisa suggests in an email, a slight change to our usual Pt. Defiance loops by offering the thought of a slightly longer route outside the park. (Read carefully as there are several lessons to be learned in this story).

This new route took us, essentially, along the entire west end of Tacoma. Starting at the park we pedalled south to the Chambers Creek area south of town. Then returned to the park by a route farther to the east. Basically a long narrow loop.

Lesson One for Dale was another reminder of just how quickly one adapts to strenuous exercise. Two months ago, if anyone were to suggest getting ON a bike, I might have done so with the intentions of a nice, easy FLAT ride around the block. However, if anyone would have suggested spending a couple hours, conquering at LEAST a half a dozen hills on a twenty mile ride I would have stared at them with a bewildered, lost gaze! Today I approach those hilly challenges like a mighty Thor, charging from the clouds on his magnificent steed with giant, thundering, hammer raised in defiance.........(Uh Dale, lets not get too carried away here!)

Our weather here in Western Washington is the usual unsettled early Spring stuff that one would expect, EXCEPT for the last week or more, WINTER has not been leaving quietly! The entire ride we were threatened by very dark, saturated clouds moving in from the west, (more than a few times we felt those cold wet raindrops, with the added exhilaration of FROZEN CHUNKS!!! The coming week however hints at a more Spring-like pattern with partly sunny skies and temperatures nudging the mid-to-high fifties!!!

Nearing the end of our ride, we changed our planned route to a more bike friendly path... ( Hmmmm, 'bike-friendly'? OK, the rest of the story is coming soon ) We found a bridge that crossed high over the freeway and into quiet West End neighborhoods. So we start roaming through these side streets in search of a route to reach the nice, easy, anticipated, two mile or more COAST back into the Park.

Pedaling up a fairly easy incline, I begin to sense a certain mushiness in Glinda. ( Yeah Ive become such a bike freak that she actually has a name now!!) Next thing I find myself uttering the dreaded words, "Hey, I got a flat tire here!"

ACT TWO, SCENE TWO

(Where Dale learns embarrassingly painful lesson on bike ride!)

When you have a neat little bag under your seat designed to carry flat tire fixes, you don't empty half of it into the trunk of your car to make room for pointless things like wallets, and cellphones!!

So there we were, two miles from the finish and no spare tube! I DID have the patch kit, but with approaching weather Lisa makes the wise suggestion that she ride ahead to her truck, and come back for me n Glinda. So off she goes.

At this point Dale is swallowing a combination of Male Ego and Gentlemanly Notions about Letting the Lady Ride Ahead Alone. But Dale reminds himself that at this point former paramedic/rescue person, Lisa is in her element.

I start walking with Glinda towards the park to lessen Red Rescue Ranger travel distance and soon after, Red Rescue Ranger arrives. Glinda gets loaded in back for the ride back to the park and THEN Dale is inundated with hysterical laughter from Rescue Person Lisa with a well placed, well deserved, "I cant believe you left your tube in your trunk...NO ONE leaves their tube in the trunk!!" And to make matters worse, I had to remind myself that I missed out on that nice, long, fast, coasting cruise DOWNHILL for the last two miles. So in the end, Lisa does twenty-one miles, and Dale only manages a bit less than nineteen. Still not bad for a middle aged guy who began riding 6 weeks ago!!

Tomorrow, after today's day of R&R, we do THIRTY MILES!!! (One should remember that while I am doing this in the pursuit of a fun new leisure time hobby, my bike buddy is in serious training for a 200 PLUS mile event coming up in just a few short months!)

Oh about the "Roaring Mouse" I mentioned. I learned yet another lesson on this trip. Bicycle tires are not quite as durable as semi truck tires!! The culprit that brought my ride to an end was a VERY, VERY small shard of glass. Smaller I'd say, than a grain of rice!

Poking Trolls!

Oh boy did I have fun last night. Fun in my own slightly obnoxious way.

Was sent out to a particularly busy station last night with a full load of Unleaded. Got there to find out this place was REALLY low ( another two hours and they would have been empty and shut down). So, I show up and start unloading. A short while later my buddy Paul shows up with a second load. We were really gonna fill this place up!

THEN, a few minutes later some other company shows up with yet another load! And out comes Big Bubba Truckdriver....donut crumbs on his shirt and everything!

Well Big Bubba don't like my style of unloading....you know, responsible, methodical, careful. He spouts off loud enough for several customers to hear. " This is the dumbest thing I've ever seen...How long you been doing this!!"

So, ol' Dale answers his "question" with his own ( just loud enough for those same customers to hear ( shame on me I know) "So, Big Bubba, how long have YOU been doing this?

Well his chest puffs out (still a good 6 inches in from his protruding hangbelly!!), and he sticks his thumbs in his belt loops and rocks back n forth on his heels in an excellent self-righteous stance and announces ( loud enough for customers to hear) "Ive been doing this for 23 years!!"

So, ol' Dale comments ( just loud enough for customers to hear ...Shame on me again) So, Big Bubba, you've been sticking hoses in the ground and for 23 years and that's ALL you've done?? Really Big Bubba, this is ALL you've done in 23 years?...to which he proudly and self righteously acknowledges. Then he stomps off to his truck for yet another donut and mountain dew...and I turn around to see two customers giving me the high five!! It was a riot!!

I think maybe about 2012, Big Bubba MIGHT get my point!!

Silver Linings!

First off. All you people from everywhere else in the country who see that fantastic scenery from Washington State, when the Hollywood film crews show up on July 8th to shoot their wonderful scenes. Keep in mind, its only a set!! Its not REAL!! So don't sell off everything and move up here because it looked great in that movie you watched!!! HAAA!!!

Only a few days until the month of APRIL and it is SNOWING in Washington!!!! In between a steady rain and wind!!! Its SPUUUUHRINGtime folks! Remember just a few days ago we were all counting down the days till Spring, so we could escape all that dreary, cold, stay cooped up in the house, weather?!!! Kinda makes one think, 'Hey! I bet they have gas tanker truck jobs in SAN DIEGO!!!'

I went out and rode my bike today.....like a nut of course!! But there WERE a couple other nuts around so I didn't feel too alone in my weirdness!! Mainly I went out to test my kewl new bike computer that I wasn't getting to work properly last weekend when I bought it. Got the problem solved and now I have a far more accurate idea of just how far my usual Chambers Bay route is. It came with a cost however......I GOT SOAKED IN THIS ENDLESS WASHINGTON RAIN!!! ( Rain pants Dale?...Nah....dont need no sissy rain pants, and I'm only gonna be out for one lap...I ain't wearing no danged sissy rain pants!") And I should say that WAS rain that had FROZEN CHUNKS in it!! Not to mention a brisk wind coming across the bay!!! OK where is the line...the long line of sympathetic people waiting to poor out wonderful, caring, supportive words?? ( Yeah supportive words....Now I have the tune, "Mrs Robinson" coursing through my brain....."Stroll around the grounds until you feel at home") ... Or maybe that should be "They're coming to take me away haha, they're coming to take me away hoho hehe haha...to the happy home with trees and flowers and chirping birds, and basket weavers who sit and smile and twiddle their thumbs and toes and they're coming to take me awayyyy HAHAAAA!!!!")

All kidding aside, I am SICK of this insufferable wet cold weather! The Pacific Northwest is great for slugs, umbrellas and people addicted to television!!!!! Come to think of it, I don't have a TV on this boat....and I don't have a fireplace either that I could toast my sock encased toes in front of! Heckwidit...I might just go to bed!

What was that, you ask, about "silver linings"?

Regarding the whining and crying about a few raindrops up there above, I couldn't very well mention silver linings with out clouds now could I?

So, silver lining for today: I had a chat with my friend in Wyoming this afternoon. Her pastor came through a concerning medical procedure with FLYING COLORS!!!! All clean and good to go...Now he only has to heal from all that invasive fiddling around the docs had to perform to make sure. But so much better than the alternative!!

So, High Fives and a Silver Lining to "Pastor S" today!!!!

Yep, I believe I mentioned something earlier about REAL wealth being Friends, Family and Good Health. ;)

Magellan?

Awhile back, my buddy Joy christened me with the nickname of "Magellan". Occasionally my phone would ring and it would be Joy, sent off to some podunk place she had never been before. And more often than not, there I was on the other end of the phone line, memory in full sail, having been there at some previous time, with that "picture" in my mind of exactly where she was, and what highway and exit she needed to get where she needed to go.

Seems I should start using that term here in my local job. Seems the last two nights I have been out wandering around, blazing a trail to some new customer. "Make us a map" they say. I say get off your 'chairborne ranger' butt, and get in your company provided car, and drive out to these new places and set this stuff up with some communication, and people like me wouldnt have to be out playing Lewis and Clark in some strange place in the middle of the night with nearly twelve thousand gallons of gasoline behind us!

With that whining out of my system, I am going to bed! Good day all!!

So they want to know "about me"?

So here we are, a guy who values the privacy of himself, his family and freinds, blabbing about his doings right here for the entire world to see!!

I suppose anything ten years old or earlier would have to go into a separate, ancient history file. Otherwise this blog would end up five hundred pages long and I'd have to find a publisher!
So, I could start about ten years ago. Around that time I suppose one could say I ventured off on a path totally different from the trail I had been plodding along before.

Stress!! In the late summer of 1998 my ex-wife, unwittingly started a chain of events that introduced to my life the entire list of top stress producers in a very short period of time. Between September of 1998 and June of 1999 I managed to experience Divorce, Loss or Sickness of a Spouse...

(she was diagnosed with cancer two months after leaving and since she had left, and moved on to her own life, I was completely in the dark about her condition and outcome for nearly 18months! Imagine reading daily obituaries hoping NOT to see the woman you married listed! But, thankfully today she is a survivor!!)

...a Job Change, (more like a complete lifestyle change!) a Major Relocation, and a New Relationship.

Shortly after finding myself a single guy again, while working in a very unsatisfying job..(or was it a pointless, meaningless GRIND?) I made a decision to train as a truck driver. Looking back at that time it was probably a form of ESCAPE! About the time I finished training and started with my first trucking job, I also met my freind Debra from Vancouver, Washington, and it was only a few months before I threw out half my stuff and saved or stored the rest, and moved there. The lesson is that 'rebound relationships' rarely work, but they CAN result in very good freindships. Debra and I long ago buried the boyfreind/girlfreind status and have become very good freinds! She and I have, with each others families shared deaths, marriages, births and life goes on as we all learn and grow. And I will add, looking back over all the people I have known over all the years, Debra is without a doubt one of the most caring, kindhearted, giving people I have ever known. I have often joked that if she discovered that the mother-in-law of the third cousin, of the step-brother of the stranger who lived 5 houses down had a birthday, or some other occasion, she would find a way to celebrate it!!!!

I had been involved in Logistics in one way or the other since 1972 when I found myself in a Transportation unit in the Air Force. All those years of seeing the trucks come and go must have put a bug in my head at some point. I started with a west coast company here at home and spent four years traveling the I-5, Seattle to LA corridor with frequent side trips as far east as Denver. On the third year I began going to places outside the normal company freight lanes, and visted places like Chicago, Kansas City and Dallas.

I got the bug to get out and stretch my legs and switched to a major carrier in Nebraska where I really started to travel. I had a road atlas that I carried (after nearly ten years it was VERY VERY well worn) and after my second year with that company and combined with the regional travels with the first one, I discovered by highlighting the routes in that atlas, that I had covered every Interstate Highway in the lower 48 states (except Maine) almost all the US highways and a good part of each individual State's highways, and visiting ALL the major metro areas became commonplace.

Often people would ask (and still do) what was your favorite part of the country. Funny thing, they all expect some wonderfully exciting, "travelogue" on my adventures. Truth be told that after logging well over one million miles behind the wheel of a semi truck, ALL OF IT has blended together into a faded, nearly distant memory. There are times when something will trigger a thought of a fun trip, a good load, the excitement of being chased by a tornado or two. (one was close enough to get me to start thinking that it was time to "quit this stuff") I've driven through the back end of hurricanes (Ivan), been in too many whiteout snowstorms where you trust the orange poles marking the ditch are accurate (IF you can see them!!) all the while knowing you cant stop from the danger of getting rearended by another truck! Driving in winds that could lift the rear trailer tires off the road became the course of a normal day. I know highways in this country where a typical winter trip reveals a truck on its side in the ditch every twenty miles! I'll keep to myself those times that carelessness, and irresponsibilty ended up in a far too close up view of the absolute WASTE of needless accidents. Even today I shake my head at the complete oblivious state of mind that most people drive in! If they only had a clue! Oh, by the way, my favorite part of the country? It's right here at home Toto. Just click your heels!

Several years ago, I found myself picking up a load of freight someplace in California (I think it was Visalia) where I met another driver from our company. I was going to Tampa, Florida with my load. Joy, was off to Chicago with hers. So we ended up travelling together, chasing each others bumpers as far as Amarillo, Texas, where after forming a new freindship our routes split.

The ensuing months and trips found us crossing paths all across the country and finding time to stop for mealbreaks and for me to absorb some of the thoughts and opinions of my living, breathing Bible Reference Guide and freind!!

Over a period of time, I think we both began convincing one another that 'regular people like us' have no business running all over the country in a "no life" life. She bailed about a year before I did, and is now settled in the Rocky Mountains, and our "get-to-gethers" now come in the form of occasional phone visits. But it should be said that the old jingle of "You meet the nicest people on a Honda", should be revised to "You meet the nicest people in a Freightliner"!! :)

About four years ago out of nowhere, a long forgotten interest in boats surfaced. One day I was driving across Montana, of all places, when I thought, I need a house....then I thought, who will cut my grass and take out the garbage? Then the idea of living on a boat began poking into my thoughts. Soon the thoughts turned into actually LOOKING at boats, with the guidance of my freind Neil ( I always seem to have to good fortune when starting a new adventure to be guided by absolute 'gurus' in the thing I find myself pursuing!..more on that later) who knows everything from the top of the mast to the bottom of the keel about boats!

I ended up moving back to Tacoma and into a thirty year old, 33 foot sailboat where I liveaboard today and it is from here that you read this prose! There are days when I ponder whether I did the right thing. When I was on the road, and home only for a few days at a time living aboard was a wonderful break from the truck. But I have to honestly say that after enduring a freezing winter aboard, climbing on deck in lousy weather to refill my water tanks, worrying about the dockpower overdoing the limitations of my wiring, staying warm, and trying to eat without proper refrigeration, I began to wonder. However, I also remind myself that I have a waterfront home with 360 degree water views, freindly marina neighbors, frequent ducks and an occasional seal passing by, not to mention the cheery racket of the ever-present seagull. And there is something to be said for getting gently rocked to sleep.

Now I have yet another 'guru' to add to my little group. And this story I tell becuase I think there is a message worth telling. While I was on the road, I absolutely detested truckstops and the people who frequented them. Chainsmoking truckdrivers who lost their bar of soap last year, with an unbending opinion on EVERYTHING, were not the sort of characters I wanted to share a meal with! I ended up eating in my little rolling "house" parked as far away from the filth, ( yeah they pour the contents of their Gatorade bottle "toilets" onto the lot!! I'm serious...truck drivers are PIGS!!) as I could and spent my down time logged into a laptop.

In some attempt to keep a connection to home, I began perusing the online version of our local paper. In there I got involved with posting comments to published articles and letters. After awhile there seemed to be a gathering of regular participants.

There was one in particular I had banged heads with over one issue or another. Lisa being labelled the Left Wing Wacko, Hippie, Liberal. And Dale, earning the title of the Right Wing, Republican, Conservative. As you can guess we had a few shall we say disagreements. Haa!

However it wasnt before long that our mutual interests down here on the water, ended up with a distant face to face "meeting" and a wave, and I think, the realization that we were both actually HUMAN! After that our 'battles" dissolved into freindlier exchanges. On occasion, we even sided together in arguments against others! Now the story goes further.

Lisa read where I made a comment about buying a bicycle. I knew some truck drivers who carried bikes with them, and I had a remote idea about maybe buying one for some vague notion of getting in shape. I started a regular walking routine last June when I came home, but this winter I, literally on the spur of the moment, bought a bike!

Now then, back to the story. So, Lisa reads in our online newspaper comment section that "Dale has a bike!?" Then she actually DARED me, in a public forum, to a ride around our local park.

(Photo's courtesy of Lisa and her kewl hi tech camera!)

This was after several short, flat, just around the block, excursions that I had been doing on my own.

So, the park, the ride. It was FIVE MILES! Something I wouldnt have considered in the past. When I discovered it was 'do-able', and actually not all that difficult, I was HOOKED!!

I try to ride every day and its ALWAYS at least 5 to 10 miles of the hilly route at the Park, or two to three hours of steady riding on flat ground in another part of town.

My weight ( which was never really bad) has dropped maybe fifteen pounds since last summer. My attitude is EXCELLENT. I find I have no interest in 'banging heads' anymore with differing opinions that prove nothing. My chronic backaches from years behind the steering wheel have vanished and I feel ten years younger....actually maybe more. When I was 43 I didn't feel THIS good!!

So, there you have it. Dales life in a nutshell. Its been up, its been down, its been here and there. Happily the downs have been far less than the ups. Today I enjoy life with the knowledge that REAL wealth is in the peace and tranquility that only comes from good health, good freinds and family. All the material junk is simply "rust and dust".

Welcome to my blog. Stay tuned for updates.